14 Of The Worst Beef Jerky Recalls In History

Beef jerky is one of those foods that seems to defy logic. The concept of eating aged, dried beef that's been sitting at room temperature for weeks without any risk to health can seem a little frightening to some folks, who likely have been brought up to fear eating anything older than a few days. However, the truth is that beef jerky can provide you with a filling, protein-rich snack that's perfectly safe to consume — most of the time, anyway.

Every now and again, beef jerky brands drop the ball on their products and release them to the market in an unsafe state for human consumption. They're then forced to issue embarrassing recalls, which put a dent in the public's trust in them. When you throw in the fact that beef jerky is pretty expensive, it can also put a dent in their wallets.

The reasons for recalling beef jerky can be pretty varied, too. A lot of time, it's called back to the warehouse because of a mislabeling or misbranding issue, which can also mean that it contains undeclared ingredients or one of the most common allergens. Elsewhere, beef jerky products have been recalled due to lack of inspection — and sometimes, rogue objects make their way into the product itself, which could cause serious harm.

Approximately 33 million people in the United States have a food allergy, equating to almost 10% of the overall population. When you throw in the fact that many of those people experience serious reactions, it becomes clear how important it is to ensure that packaging is clearly labeled with any potential triggers. Sadly, this wasn't the case in June 2025, when it was discovered that beef jerky and snack stick products made by Springville Meat & Cold Storage Co. were missing a key allergen on their labels. The offending products had anchovies in them, meaning that anybody with a fish allergy was at risk of a reaction.

The anchovies came in the form of Worcestershire sauce, which was used as a flavor component for the jerky. Alongside the beef products made by the company, there were also a host of venison, buffalo, and elk jerky products that were missing the allergen from their labels. To be fair to Springville Meat & Cold Storage Co., the mix-up had occurred due to a change in Worcestershire sauce, with the previous one not containing anchovies at all; it's not like they were trying to fool their customers. Regardless, the company ultimately had to put out a recall for over 15,000 pounds of product.

Man, food companies really love to mislabel their foods, huh? Well, they probably don't — but it's amazing how often it happens. It occurred yet again in 2014 when Prime Snax Incorporated, a manufacturer based in Utah, put out a massive amount of beef jerky snacks in loads of different flavors without mentioning the presence of soy lecithin on the label. This was discovered when an inspector from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (or FSIS) conducted a label review and observed that it wasn't anywhere to be seen, despite the company using it as a releasing agent. The lecithin was being sprayed into the jerky's packaging to prevent it from sticking, and Prime Snax didn't think that this would mean that it counted as an ingredient.

Well, it still needed to be on that label. Although the amount of soy in soy lecithin is often not enough to trigger a severe reaction, there's always the possibility that people who are more sensitive to it will experience a response. Prime Snax therefore had to issue a recall for its affected products, and approximately 90,000 pounds of jerky had to be tracked down and taken off shelves. We imagine that was a fairly costly mistake.

Another day, another recall of beef jerky that wasn't properly labeled. This happens a little more often than you might think, folks. This time it was the turn of Whiskey Hill Smokehouse, which had sent thousands upon thousands of pounds of products to stores without mentioning that it all had soy in it. As soy is a known allergen (and a pretty common one), Whiskey Hill Smokehouse had to recall over 22,000 pounds of jerky that had been shipped across the United States.

What made things even more stressful for the food company was the fact that its jerky had been produced for more than a year before anybody spotted the mistake, which left it with a massive spread of products and use-by dates to find. As well as beef jerky, the firm's venison and ostrich jerky products were also affected, although in relatively small quantities compared to its beef items. The good news was that nobody was impacted by the manufacturing mistake and experienced an allergic response.

Now, call us old fashioned, but when we're eating a product like beef jerky we kinda want it to be inspected by somebody beforehand. It's just something about eating dried meat that gives us the heebie-jeebies, y'all — we'd like to know that it's safe. So you can imagine how shocked we were to find out that in 2024, a company was selling its beef jerky products without having them inspected by the FSIS. What was even more shocking was that Hickory Hollow Jerky had asked to stop participating with the FSIS' inspection activities, but was still putting the USDA mark of inspection on its products.

Kinda wild, right? No wonder that when the FSIS found out about all this, it wasn't pleased — which likely prompted Hickory Hollow Jerky to issue a recall. In total, it had to recall roughly 6,229 pounds, in virtually all of its flavors. These jerky products had been produced over multiple months before anybody had spotted the issue, and as the business had changed hands midway through the affected production period, it likely left the new owners with a serious problem on their hands.

You probably expect your beef jerky to contain beef, right? That'd be a fair assumption, given that the appeal of the product is in its pure-beef nature that promises copious amounts of protein. Every now and again, though, food manufacturers will sneak in another animal product to their recipes that thereby make the jerky risky for certain people with allergens. Although you can generally expect them to list these allergens on the label, sometimes they don't quite manage to do so.

This was the deal in 2011, when Yants had to recall five of its beef jerky products because anchovies weren't listed in the recipes as an allergen. The jerky was made with Worcestershire sauce that had anchovy puree in it, and when the FSIS noted in a label review that it wasn't on there, the products had to be tracked down. We're willing to bet that Yants wasn't super happy about the quantity of the recall, either: 6,200 pounds of beef jerky was deemed unsafe for sale.

One of the best things about beef jerky is that it can be flavored in loads of different ways. However, the more ingredients food firms add, the more likely it is that they'll leave something out unintentionally — as Legacy Food Company Inc. discovered in 2021. The beef jerky manufacturer had to issue a recall of almost 68,000 pounds (nearly 34 tons) of six of its specialty jerky flavors, including its curry beef jerky, fish sauce flavored jerky, and hot peppered jerky. The recall was initiated after a routine FSIS inspection discovered that it was missing sesame oil from its ingredients list, which meant that the products presented a serious risk to folks with sesame allergies.

The problem was that the sesame oil was actually a sub-ingredient, and the fact that it was a component of a larger addition to the jerky perhaps made it easier to miss. Nonetheless, this recall shone a light on how essential it is for food companies to keep a handle on what their own suppliers are placing in their food. Legacy Food Company was helped slightly by the fact that its jerky had only been shipped across California, but the sheer quantity of items recalled no doubt left it out of pocket.

Every now and then, a food recall is caused by an ingredient that makes us feel pretty ill. Back in 2006, that ingredient was doramectin, a veterinary drug used to treat parasites in cattle, which had potentially made its way into a huge amount of beef jerky. Michigan-based Mirab USA Inc. had to recall more than 11 tons of its beef jerky as a result of the potential contamination, with eight different varieties of its jerky affected. Although the affected lots had only been produced over a few days, which made the recall slightly easier to manage, it was a big amount of product to track down — especially given that it had been shipped to multiple states.

It's not entirely clear how the doramectin got into the food in the first place, but it could well have been residue from the cattle being treated with the drug. It's suggested that cows treated with doramectin should be given a 35-day window after to allow the drug to pass through their system. This perhaps indicates that residue can pass down through the food chain, and that the cattle used for the jerky hadn't been given enough time.

Beef jerky is famous for being a pretty tough food to chew and swallow. As a result, you kinda don't want anything in there that'll make eating or digesting it any harder — like metal. Sadly, that was the case in 2025, when an Idaho food producer shipped almost 30,000 pounds of beef jerky to distribution centers around the country. The manufacturer, Idaho Smokehouse Partners, then found out via two consumer complaints that metal pieces had been found in its Chomps Original Beef Sticks, and a recall ensued.

Idaho Smokehouse Partners got off lightly here: Although it had received the news that its jerky was contaminated, nobody had become injured from eating it. However, the sheer fact that two people had reported finding metal was enough to make everyone nervous, as it meant that more could be out there. The pieces of metal that folks were finding weren't exactly tiny, either: Pictures released by the FSIS showed a fairly large shard that was clearly found embedded in the meat itself, which was large enough to cause significant damage.

In 2022, a significant amount of beef jerky was recalled from states across the country after it emerged that it hadn't been properly inspected. Tennessee Brown Bag, a company based in (you guessed it!) Tennessee, was forced to recall almost 4,600 pounds of its jerky products. Seven different flavors of beef jerky that had been shipped to five different states had to be tracked down.

The reason for the recall was simple, but ominous: The items hadn't been expected by the FSIS. This, friends, is a bigger problem than you might think. The FSIS is responsible for inspecting all meat products that are sold from state to state to ensure they meet safety standards. Those products that receive inspection are rewarded with that all-important USDA stamp, which gives customers the assurance that what they're about to eat isn't going to harm them in any way. The lack of said stamp on meat products like jerky, therefore, is a big deal, and could indicate that items haven't been inspected, so who knows what you're about to eat? Tennessee Brown Bag found this all out the hard way.

"Food" and "rodents" are two words that you really don't want to be used in the same sentence. Unfortunately, the combination of the two prompted a big old recall way back in 2013. Yauk's Specialty Meats, a firm based in Colorado, had to conduct a wide scale recall of its products after the FSIS discovered that the conditions they were produced in were unsanitary. Its Horned Beef jerky, along with multiple other products, had to be taken out of circulation, with the company having to issue a follow-up recall to expand on its original notice.

When the FSIS inspected its production unit, it found that Yauk's Specialty Meats had a rodent problem — and that problem had gotten everywhere. The inspection agency found rodents in virtually every part of the firm's facility. The grossest part about all this was that it had apparently been living with this issue for almost a year: When the recall was issued, it encompassed approximately eight months' worth of products. All in all, over 90,000 pounds of meat and poultry products had to be recalled.

One thing we're really not a fan of is Listeria. Can you blame us? Listeria infection can cause a host of nasty symptoms and it can lead to both serious illness and death, with approximately 260 people a year dying from infection. It's little wonder, then, that food companies and agencies alike take Listeria contamination incredibly seriously — and so when one manufacturer found that its beef jerky may be riddled with the bacteria, it had to recall its product immediately. In 2022, Magnolia Provision Company had to recall almost 500 pounds of three different beef jerky products when Listeria monocytogenes was found on the surface of its food. While the amount of jerky itself was small, the reason for recall was super serious.

Magnolia Provision Company was lucky here: While it had found Listeria bacteria, nobody had reported becoming ill from eating its jerky. This is good news, too, as beef jerky can last for a while after it's opened. It was also saved by the fact that the potentially contaminated products had all been manufactured on the same day. It had, however, been shipped nationwide, and was no doubt a trial to track down.

Beef jerky can often have way more ingredients than you might think, and all of those ingredients can have ingredients of their own. This can create a complicated list of items that make up your snack food. However, when some of those ingredients are missed off the label, things can get pretty risky. Such was the case in 2010, when Bach Cúc Beef Jerky, Inc. shipped almost 4,000 pounds of teriyaki beef jerky without listing the fact that it had wheat, a known allergen, on its label.

The missing ingredient was discovered by the FSIS and while nobody had experienced an allergic response from eating the beef jerky, it was clearly an issue they had to deal with immediately. Although it wasn't clear just where the wheat was in the jerky, we'd guess that it was in the teriyaki sauce itself. Store-bought teriyaki sauce is made using soy sauce, which typically contains wheat, and consuming it can be pretty risky for folks with a gluten intolerance or celiac disease.

Although it isn't always super processed, commercially made beef jerky tends to go through a fair few steps before it goes to market. All of these steps can make it seem a bit less natural, but it can also give you the assurance that what you're about to eat is standardized and safe. Unfortunately, though, deviations can occur even in factory settings, which can lead to items becoming under-processed and riskier to eat. This was the very situation in 2018, when California Jerky Factory, Inc. was alerted to a processing deviation in its operations by the FSIS. This then prompted the company to have to recall a whopping 13 different products from three different states.

The recall notice wasn't clear about what the deviation actually was, but it's safe to say that it probably wasn't great and could have affected the safety of the products. For instance, if there was an issue with the drying process, the affected jerky could have contained too much moisture, which could allow the growth of bacteria or mold. Alternatively, it could be that it just wasn't up to scratch, and customers were getting a poorer product.

It's always a bad day for food companies when they discover they've missed an allergen on their food labels. It's a worse day when they discover that they've missed two. M&K II Co. faced possibly one of the worst days in its operation back in 2010, when it found out that its beef jerky was missing both soy and wheat from its allergen labels. It then had to roll up its sleeves and conduct a rather embarrassing recall of roughly 8,000 pounds of its products.

M&K II Co. was pretty lucky that nobody had experienced an allergic reaction to eating its jerky, especially given how long it had been on sale. The offending items had been produced for sale between January and May, and sold online and in stores. The issue had been discovered by the FSIS, who immediately prompted the company to start recalling its items.